Not your grandfather's IMF: global crisis, 'productive incoherence' and developmental policy space

Abstract

The response by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (and developing country national governments) to the current global financial crisis represents a moment of what I term ‘productive incoherence’, which has displaced the constraining ‘neoliberal coherence’ of the past several decades. Productive incoherence refers to the proliferation of inconsistent and even contradictory strategies and statements by the IMF that to date have not congealed into any sort of new, organised regime. Those who see continuity at the IMF emphasise the reassertion of the IMF's authority, the reiteration of pro-cyclical policy adjustment and the maintenance of existing governance patterns within the institution. In contrast, evidence of discontinuity includes a world now populated by increasingly autonomous states in the South, the normalisation of capital controls and Fund conditionality programmes that are inconsistent in key respects. In the face of this evidence, it is best to understand the current conjuncture as an ‘interregnum’ that is pregnant with new development possibilities.